Ambushed on Afghanistan's 'Red Mountain'

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Ambushed on Afghanistan's 'Red Mountain'

MARGAH, Afghanistan – The gunshot sounded like splitting wood. The American paratroopers, scattered across the hills of this rough border town in eastern Paktika province, dove for cover behind rocks, mud walls and irrigation ditches. A few seconds later, they trained their weapons on their attackers' location.

The ensuing firefight – pitting the soldiers of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment plus their attached Afghan troops against a small band of Taliban fighters – was the climax to a suspense story told in reverse on April 8. The Americans' 13-hour patrol began with a brief, intense gunfight then trailed off in mystery and ambiguity amid the unforgiving terrain and unfamiliar local culture in one of Afghanistan's most strategic provinces.

It's an exaggeration to say that Fox Company's roughly 100 soldiers and their Afghan National Army comrades are all alone in Margah. But not by much. Combat Outpost Margah – a football-field-size perimeter dotted with sandbags, plywood huts and earthen Hesco barriers – huddles under a hilltop observation post on a plain outside of town.

No Fox Company soldiers had died – but not for a lack of Taliban trying.The base is resupplied by helicopter. The only vehicles that routinely leave the dirt-and-razor-wire walls are the tricked-out pickup trucks belonging to the co-located Afghan National Army unit. From COP Margah, small American patrols march into the countryside or drop in by helicopter, in a last-ditch effort by NATO to intercept insurgents sneaking across the border with Pakistan.

It's dirty, difficult work in dangerous conditions. No Fox Company soldiers have died at COP Margah – but not for a lack of Taliban trying. One October assault on the base left the 92 Taliban dead and the overrun observation post in ruins. A two-day, helicopter-borne reconnaissance patrol the first week of April was targeted by rocket-firing insurgents.

Leading the April 8 patrols, 1st Lt. Sean McCune hadn't meant to confront insurgents. He simply wanted to quietly gather information. Fox Company's 2nd and 3rd Platoons would march – hopefully unseen – several miles over flower-speckled mountains, across rocky riverbeds and through the narrow mud corridors of a medieval Afghan village called Baqer Kheyl.

There, the Americans and their Afghan counterparts would interrogate Afghan men and boys and search their homes, hoping to zero in on the identities of the area's insurgents.

But instead of resolving the mystery of Baqer Kheyl's militants, Fox Company collided with the unknown insurgents just an hour after departing COP Margah, in the shadow of a place the Taliban called "Red Mountain."

Cover of Darkness
—————–

McCune cursed himself. The stocky officer with the shaved head crouched among the poplars and underbrush with squad leader Sgt. Kevin Mahon. Young "trigger-pullers" of the 2nd Platoon were strung out before and behind them. With 3rd Platoon covering them, 2nd Platoon had crossed a wide, dry riverbed – a wadi – just in time.

No sooner had the Americans taken cover than a convoy of Afghan civilians riding in pickups and flatbeds trundled down the wadi past their position.

McCune did not kid himself that he and his troopers could remain hidden all day. But he had hoped to get close to Baqer Kheyl before giving away his location. Fox Company had left their outpost at 5 a.m., just as the horizon was shading from black to blue. "We should have left at four – [and] have some darkness to cover our movement," McCune told Mahon.

It wasn't clear whether the Afghans in the convoy had seen the soldiers. But someone had seen them. For 2nd Platoon was just emerging from the treeline when the first gunshot echoed off the surrounding hills. It had come from the wadi.

American machine-gunners leaped over piles of rocks and fumbled with their bulky weapons. One soldier dropped where he stood and ended up lying prone along a winding dirt path exposed to the wadi. McCune, Sgt. Clifford Edwards, Pvt. Bryan Schlund, radioman Pvt. Chris Munoz, a mortarman named Spec. J.K. Milam, an interpreter and this reporter huddled at the base of a hill, partially protected by some trees along the wadi's edge.

>With Americans on both sides of the wadi and insurgents somewhere in between, Fox Company was in danger of destroying itself in the crossfire.

AK-47s chattered. Rocket-propelled grenades whooshed. On one side of the wadi, 2nd Platoon opened fire with assault rifles and machine guns and 3rd Platoon on the other side. The soldier on the exposed pathway – an intelligence specialist who asked to remain anonymous – watched bullets kick up dirt divots mere feet away.

With a word from McCune, Milam flew into action. The thin, young soldier pulled a 60-millimeter tube from his backpack and slammed its baseplate into the earth. Digging in the packs of the soldiers around him, Milam found a high-explosive round. McCune called out the range and direction and Milam let the round slide into the tube.

He took aim, squeezed a trigger, and the tube coughed its lethal shape into a high arc over the trees. A few seconds later, there was a blast that drowned out the other sounds of combat.

Milam was reaching for his next round when Edwards yelled, "Cease fire!" A frantic 3rd Platoon soldier had radioed the sergeant to say the first mortar round had exploded just 30 feet from some Afghan National Army soldiers.

With Americans and their allies on both sides of the wadi and insurgents somewhere in between, Fox Company was in danger of destroying itself in the crossfire.

Air Cover
———

The flipside was that the insurgents were just about surrounded.

So with the Americans' machine-gun fire walking onto their positions, the Taliban fighters broke contact ... and disappeared among the boulders, trees and irrigation ditches.

Fearing a second attack, McCune ordered 2nd Platoon to climb the nearest high ground while 3rd Platoon continued covering it. Meanwhile, Edwards and Munoz worked their radios, begging for artillery and air support. Within minutes, the roar of jet engines announced the arrival of two F-15 Strike Eagle fighter-bombers. They orbited in a tight circle over 2nd Platoon's heads, the shapes of bombs and missiles clearly visible under their wings.

Soon, the Strike Eagles had company. Two Apache helicopters, circling underneath the jet fighters, in the same direction. Artillery from a nearby base and mortars from COP Margah could not fire for risk of hitting the aircraft, but Edwards lined up a mortar barrage from the outpost, in the event the aerial armada got called away or grounded by bad weather.

Eying the assembled firepower, McCune felt the urge to blow something up. "I want to drop a GBU," he said, referring to the Guided Bomb Units carried by the F-15s. "That would give me a chubby."

It seemed he might get his chance. For even with the full weight of NATO's air force stacked against them, the Taliban fighters were already preparing for their next attack.

>With a 70-pound radio strapped to his back, he probably spoke for the whole platoon when he said, 'FYI, I hate my job.'

Exactly how Fox Company knew this, they'd rather not discuss. Needless to say, once the fighting starts, everyone starts communicating. And the more anyone communicates, the more likely someone else is to overhear. Even when the Americans can't see their assailants or even guess at their appearance, more often than not they can catch some of what their enemies are saying to each other.

As 2nd Platoon scaled the high ground – chest heaving, breaths wheezing, legs aching – one Talib told another that the Americans were near "Red Mountain." Informed of this, Mahon peered around at the mountains, daubed yellow by clusters of spring flowers. "I don't see no red mountain," he drawled.

McCune scanned the hilltops and, for reasons he never explained, identified one as Red Mountain. He had COP Margah's mortars zero in on it, just in case. Then he rallied his out-of-breath troops. "Let's keep moving!"

Munoz, a 70-pound radio strapped to his back, probably spoke for the whole platoon when he told Mahon, "FYI, I hate my job."

"FYI, we all hate our jobs," Mahon shot back.

Where's Jamal?
————–

Maybe the air power spooked them, after all. Maybe 2nd Platoon's ascent to higher ground put the bad guys at an insurmountable disadvantage. Maybe, as subsequent intelligence would seem to indicate, they were waiting for reinforcements – one reinforcement, in particular. In any event, an hour later the Taliban had not launched their follow-on attack on Fox Company, and the NATO warplanes departed.

Two hours later, still nothing. Three, four, five hours ... the Taliban held their fire.

McCune led his troops across the mountains to Baqer Kheyl. The Taliban kept pace, the rough outline of their plans evident to NATO intelligence agents. The insurgents set up a rocket launcher but never used it. They worried over their weapons caches hidden in nearby buildings. They tried to maneuver fighters to surround the American and Afghan soldiers advancing on Baqer Kheyl.

Staff Sgt. Gordon Burke, a grizzled veteran of two wars, insisted the Talibs were "bullshitting." There was growing evidence Burke was right. For when the American and Afghan troops marched into Baqer Kheyl and began knocking on doors, the insurgents insisted they would attack, if only they could find "Jamal."

This was the point where I realized I would have to insert myself in this story. Because I was the only person to say aloud what everyone else was surely wondering. "'Jamal' – that's not a code word?" I asked the soldiers around me. "It's an actual guy named Jamal?"

Sure enough, it appeared the Taliban had hinged phase two of their Red Mountain ambush on a single hard-to-find dude, Jamal. Without him, a successful attack was impossible – or so the insurgents seemed to insist. It was also possible that this mysterious Jamal character was just cover for the Taliban simply giving up ... for now.

McCune wanted to know where Jamal was, too. And the other Taliban, for that matter. In Baqer Kheyl, he told every man and boy he could corner the same thing. "I want to know who the troublemakers are, where they are and where they're hiding their stuff."

>'We are with no side,' said the old man. 'What are we supposed to do?'

The reply of an old man named Allahwudhan was typical. He said he didn't know anything about the Taliban. But what he really meant was, he didn't want to get involved. "They come demanding information about the ANA and you," Allahwudhan said of the insurgents.

"You come demanding information on the Taliban," the old man added, referring to Fox Company. "We are with no side. What are we supposed to do?"

McCune was unimpressed ... and growing impatient. "Last chance," he countered. "Tell me where one bad guy is and I'll leave you alone."

But Allahwudhan pleaded ignorance, and the Americans left Baqer Kheyl no wiser about the identity of local insurgents.

It was small comfort that, now a half-day into Fox Company's patrol, their Taliban assailants were equally befuddled. At some point during 2nd Platoon's search of the village, the insurgents had lost track of their enemy. As Fox Company trudged back toward COP Margah, intelligence reports indicated the Talibs were searching wadis on both sides of Baqer Kheyl, trying to pinpoint the Americans.